(Pacer Graphic / Sophia Phillips)

When speaking about the most important directors in Hollywood today, it would be remiss to not include Christopher Nolan in the conversation. From the out-of-this-world phenomenon ‘Interstellar’ to the explosive drama ‘Oppenheimer’, Nolan has carved a name for himself on the walls of film history.

His most recent project, however, may just be the greatest of them all.

‘The Odyssey’ is a 2026 action-fantasy film based on ancient Greek poet Homer’s classic epic poem. ‘The Odyssey’ follows the story of Odysseus (Matt Damon), hero of the Trojan War and king of Ithaca, as he attempts to make his way back home after getting lost at sea following the end of the war. Odysseus must survive gods, monsters and everything in between during his long 10-year journey back home. There are many aspects of ‘The Odyssey’ that make it a film worthy of constant praise, but one of the main talking points about it is Nolan’s use of IMAX 15-perf 70mm film cameras for the entirety of the film’s production. It is the first feature film to do so, marking a large moment in cinematic history. 

There are plenty of benefits to using the IMAX film cameras. While average digital cameras use resolution pixels, IMAX cameras utilize film. Film uses light-sensitive silver halide crystals and dye couplers in a chemical structure. This chemical would take the information from the camera and turn it into grains on the film roll, with the size of the grain affecting how it collects the light. However, before IMAX, film was only 35mm and had issues with the size of the grains because they always remained the same size. This changed when IMAX doubled the size of the film to 70mm. Now that it is on a larger scale, the quality of films have improved. 

After another one of Nolan’s films, ‘The Dark Knight’ in 2008, Hollywood movies began using IMAX cameras for full sequences. Now, Nolan has used these IMAX cameras to their full capacity and created a film using them entirely. This type of advancement in filmmaking raises the bar for what huge blockbusters will look like going forward. ‘The Odyssey’ showcases the sharpness, detail and incredibly rich and beautiful colors of the IMAX film cameras. It lays the foundation for future filmmakers that will come after Nolan and continue to upgrade the quality of movies.

“I think we’re starting to see, you know, more of a resurgence in directors, producers, shooting in actual film stock,” said Rodney Freed, a professor in the mass media and strategic communication department at the University of Tennessee at Martin. “For a while there, everybody went to digital because it was much cheaper. It was easier to do. You didn’t have to worry about developing. You’d have immediate access to dailies. But I think there is going to be kind of a niche for this type.”

However, filming on IMAX does come with its set of challenges. Average IMAX cameras use about 1,000 feet of film in the magazine, and since it uses 334 feet per minute, that only allows for three minutes of shooting. Not only that, but the cameras are incredibly noisy due to the movement of the film, the motors and the shutter. For a long time, this made it impossible to shoot dialogue scenes with the cameras. That was before the IMAX company, alongside Nolan himself and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, engineered a camera enclosure known as the “blimp” to reduce the noise of the camera, allowing for it to shoot scenes with dialogue in them. This was invented specifically for the cameras on the set of ‘The Odyssey’, and now the blimp will help film dialogue scenes in future movies.

“I’m sure it was a lot of work trying to keep up with that and trying to keep everything loaded, and then the cost of it…I think one number I saw was about $3,000,000 for just film stock alone. So, that’s incredible. That means you’ve got to make a lot of money on that film to get part of that back,” said Freed when talking about the difficulties of shooting with the IMAX camera.

Ever since he was 16 years old, Nolan dreamed of shooting a film entirely on IMAX cameras, and he didn’t disappoint. ‘The Odyssey’ is best experienced in an IMAX theater, but only 25 of them in America are fully equipped to project 70mm film. 

“Obviously, you’ll be able to stream it, and if you have a TV that’s big enough, you’re going to be able to see some of that quality show through,” said Freed. “But to really, truly get this, you have to go to an IMAX theater to be able to do that.”

‘The Odyssey’ still looks phenomenal in the average theater, though. It’ll no doubt have a place during the next Academy Awards ceremony.

Even though it’s begun moving out of theaters, ‘The Odyssey’ will likely be streaming on Peacock, Universal Studios’ streaming service, within the next few months. ‘The Odyssey’ is a film that’ll be studied by future directors for years to come, inspiring them to strive to push the art of filmmaking even further.